But it was the best of a bad lot back in the day. Even then though, beer was fuckloads better in the UK than Ireland; at least there was stuff like Newky Brown, London Pride and Timothy Taylor Best Landlord

they were set up to protect the existence of cask ale against the desires of the big breweries in moving to types of beer with better profit margins/lower spoilage

after a brief resurgence cask ale is again in decline, whereas keg is on the ascendancy and bring pushed by big breweries in preference to cask because it's easier to keep

so in terms of CAMRA being a lobbying group to keep alive traditional british beer types that would otherwise go extinct due to commercial pressures, I think it's good that they are maintaining that focus - keg doesn't really need that support

similarly they protect 'real' cider/perry against the economics of big breweries wanting artificially carbonated ciders that last longer

so even as a lover of both cask and keg, I think that cask needs supporting against keg, as otherwise we'll only have keg - it's not that keg isn't 'real' ale

of 'fake' craft beer, where the big guys are putting out middling quality IPAs and calling it craft beer and buying up smaller breweries to consolidate them etc.... this is a different fight but one they should be helping with. SIBA are trying but if camra were willing and able to help smaler breweries "Camra certified craft beer" or whatever it could help a lot.